Saudade
by TheDescension
Summary: She understands her symbolic importance: she is the accidental conjugation of an experiment of the Capitol and something indigenous to the districts. She is neither a jabberjay nor a mockingbird. Almost as consolation, as useless words to her broken soul, she tells herself, she is a mockingjay, the Mockingjay, free to fly wherever she wants. She does not have a side.


Alright, so this is my first fic in _The Hunger Games_ fandom.

I was meant to write a Gale/Katniss oneshot but well, look what I ended up with. This is more of an extended oneshot, which is essentially Katniss-centric. It more or less adheres to canon other than the Gale/Katniss scenes where I have taken loads of creative liberty.

I have rated this T, since there isn't anything explicit or graphic, just a bit of mention of sex.

I do not own _The Hunger Games,_ obviously.

No more talk from me. Enjoy!

And leave a review on the way out. I would love to hear from you guys.

* * *

She tries closing her eyes again, tries to cut off the world outside and retreat into a shell where she is capable of sleeping through the night, where nightmares do not haunt her, where she does not have blood on her hands, where the Games have not happened, where she feels human, where she _feels._

Because these days, holed up underground in a district she never knew existed, where she cannot even see the sun burning bright or the stars shining in the darkness, she has forgotten what it feels to _feel._ To her, every day is a struggle, the restrained life is smothering. She hates how there is a time stamp for everything. It chokes her, asphyxiates her until she is convinced that the easiest way to survive is by not _feeling._ She does not allow gratuitous and unnecessary thoughts filter into her head, she focuses on the things that are important, things she needs to stay alive and keep her family alive.

And Peeta. And Gale.

That seems like a thread of thought that is not imperative for survival so she lets it die in the cradle: no thinking about Peeta or Gale.

Thirteen saps whatever life remained within her and siphons it off somewhere so far away that she does not know how to regain it. Thirteen kills her from the inside, breaks her.

She thinks of herself as an unsolvable jigsaw puzzle: one that can never be pieced together to form something wholesome, one that is almost complete but not quite.

In Thirteen, she sometimes feels like an Avox, chained and restricted, unable to voice herself. Other times, she feels like a controlled disposable item.

But never for once does she feel like Katniss Everdeen, the girl on fire.

* * *

She reminds herself every day that she is Katniss Everdeen. Her home is in District 12. Her father worked in the coal mines till he was killed in an accident. She has a sister, four years younger than her. Her mother is a healer. She loves to hunt and is deadly with the bow and the arrow.

She reminds herself of Gale, her best friend, her hunting partner, her support and of Peeta, her… She does not have a label for him.

She reminds herself that she is the girl who had won the 74th Hunger Games, the girl who had screamed defiance right at the Capitol, who had threatened to end her life with Nightlock. She is the girl Cinna had seen hope in, she is the one so many have seen hope in.

She wonders why she herself remains blind to this hope.

She reminds herself that she is the symbol of this rebellion, she is the fuel to this raging fire, she is the one who is fanning this inferno, that will burn the Capitol to the ground, that will burn Snow to the ground.

She tries to leave out the other facts. She is also the girl who had failed to protect Rue, young Rue who did not deserve any of the monstrosities that was handed out to her. She is also the girl who had failed to protect Peeta, she is the reason why Johanna is where she is and the reason why Mags is dead, the reason why Twelve has been destroyed.

But in the end, there is only one thing that she keeps telling herself on repeat: she is the girl on fire. She can be who she wants to be, she can do what she wants to do. She is fire: she can destroy yet spring life, she is the annihilator yet she is the breeder of life, the giver of life. She can burn so bright that the whole of Panem will gaze at her with bewildered reverence, that Snow will be reduced to ashes by her sheer power, that she will be able to overshadow all the injustice of the past.

A small voice in her head tells her otherwise though: that this fierce blazing inferno of hers will swallow her alive some day, engulf her with its flames and immolate her till she ceases to exist.

 _Gone._

* * *

All she wants to do is die.

Perhaps death is the only escape from this lifeless life of hers. She sees death as a mercy. It will make her forget every thing that she has failed to become, everyone who she has failed to protect, every promise that she has failed to keep.

But then, she sees Prim. She sees her mother and she sees Gale.

She loathes herself for being selfish, for just thinking about her own salvation and absolution and for never thinking about what her death could do to these people.

The only people, she knows, who love her unconditionally.

* * *

And so she becomes the Mockingjay.

Partly to defeat Snow, partly to do what is best for the people of Panem, partly to protect Peeta but mostly to calm her demons, to give herself one last chance at fixing everything that she has set wrong.

She understands her symbolic importance: she is the accidental conjugation of an experiment of the Capitol and something indigenous to the districts. She is neither a jabberjay nor a mockingbird. Maybe that is why she feels no true allegiance, all she wants to do is keep Peeta alive.

Gale is a true mockingbird, she realizes. He is everything that a rebel should be: loyal, devoted and selfless. He would die for the cause without thinking twice and that scares her.

Seeing all these people around her: Boggs, Gale, Plutarch, Coin, Beetee, Cressida, she feels intimidated of their commitment and devotion.

She wishes she could feel more about this campaign, she wants to be more passionate about it but she cannot. She dislikes herself for this inability, for not being able to completely surrender to the cause but no matter how much she tries, she fails to _feel._

Almost as consolation, as useless words to her broken soul, she tells herself, she is a mockingjay, she is _the_ Mockingjay, free to fly wherever she wants.

She does not have a side.

* * *

She has never been in love. She has never allowed herself to fall for someone, to give away a piece of herself to someone else. She has always been guarded, she has always controlled her feelings.

She is convinced that she is not in love with Peeta when she sees Finnick, the sex symbol of the Capitol who is now a broken irreparable mess. She sees him waiting out the days with a rope in his hands, tying knots and more knots, and more knots. Finnick and his pure unadulterated concern for Annie tells her that she is not in love with Peeta.

But there are times when her thoughts are clouded. Clasping the pearl in her hands, she thinks of her time with him: from the cheesily overdone pretentious moments to sell the image of them being star crossed lovers to the effortlessly sublime spontaneous ones when they talked of their did favorite colors.

 _Orange. Like sunset._

She smiles briefly for a moment, a ghost of a smile playing on her lips for the tiniest of moments till she is forced to bring herself back to the brutal reality.

Peeta is gone, lost somewhere in the labyrinthine lies and treachery of the Capitol.

Who is left behind is Gale. He has finally found a set of like minded people who want to stomp on the dictatorial autocratic regimes of the Capitol just as badly as him. He has found a place where he belongs, somewhere he can plot and scheme legally against Snow and his totalitarian way of ruling.

But he still is in pain, she sees that. He wears his mask better than she does but she can see through it, she can see how much he blames himself for not saving more people in Twelve.

When they are allowed to hunt, to escape from the confines of the underground establishment, she sees him slipping away from reality.

No matter how much she tries she cannot engage with him, she cannot get through him, it is almost like he is possessed.

She wants to love him then. She wants to wrap her arms around him, and secure him in her grasp.

But she realizes, all that she has to offer is meaningless platitudes, nothing more than that. She is not ready to make any more promises, to be the one who plants a seed of hope in someone else's mind, a seed that she knows will never receive any nourishment.

* * *

She has nightmares almost every time she manages to sleep. Some nights, she has more than one of the horribly inchoate animistic dreams. She ends up staying awake those nights, longing to feel Peeta's reassuring touch. Sometimes, she wakes up Prim with her screams and she stays beside her, whispering that it is not real.

She sees too many things to remember, not that she is particularly keen to remember them.

Certain things stand out: the deathless death of Cato, the mutts tearing at his broken body, Mags disappearing into the poisonous mist, Peeta almost dying in the arena and Finnick resuscitating him, the death blows rained on Gale by that despicable brute of a man, Thread, the Seam and the Hob, her father, the song. She has steeled herself to survive these nightmares.

The ones which scare her, leave her in a cold sweat, expose all her fears and leave her as a ball of fragile vulnerability are the ones scarred with memories of Snow, his white roses and his hateful vindictive throttling laugh.

* * *

She is reduced to a mere spectator as the Capitol bombs the wounded at Eight. She wants to scream, wants to cry but everything is a tangled mess inside, nothing makes sense.

 _None of it makes sense._

She wants to curl into a ball and hide in Gale's arms but she cannot. There is a war to be won and so she thunders, "Fire is catching! And if we burn, you burn with us!"

* * *

They visit Twelve. She kisses Gale. He gives her the cold shoulder.

She hates to admit it, even to herself, that Gale's detached demeanor hurts her just as bad as Peeta's bedraggled emaciated condition on television did.

These days, she thinks a lot about Gale. She thinks about all that he said the other day in Twelve. She wonders if it is true: if the only way in which he can get her attention is by being in pain. Initially, she dismisses it as yet another hot headed accusation from him but with time, she realizes that he was not all that wrong either.

The only time when they are alone is when they are hunting in the woods and then, they hardly speak; good hunting demands absolute silence. Other times, they are surrounded by other people: her prep team, Cressida and her team, Boggs, Coin, Plutarch, the list does not end. She wonders how the tension and the rift came to being in the first place. It surprises her, shocks her.

She badly misses her old life in the Seam: it was nothing compared to what she is a part of now. She misses the old Gale, the one that called her Catnip, the one that made her smile even without trying.

She hates the war in that moment, more than she has ever done, for taking away something so very precious from her, for taking away _her_ Gale from her.

She seeks him out, determined to have him back. She is not going to lose every battle, this one she will win.

He is surprised to find her in his compartment. Alone.

She rambles, tells him how she regrets not being there for him when he needed her the most, how she wants to fix things, how she cannot bear the thought of losing him.

He smiles at her, sadness in his eyes. Then, he moves towards her and presses his lips on hers. He holds her like that for a long moment.

She does not resist, does not protest, lets his lips stay on hers. He makes her feel alive and she feels certain that she can still _feel_.

Gale pulls back and runs his fingers down the side of her face. His touch is feather-light, delicate and he whispers, "I have missed you, Catnip."

* * *

He ends up in her compartment one night: they are both warding off demons from Eight. She leads him to her bed, his hands trembling against hers. They are careful not to wake up Prim or Mrs. Everdeen.

Or Buttercup.

The bed is too small but they fit: Gale on his back and Katniss huddled at his side, her head on his chest.

They do not talk, just lie there. She hears his strained breathing and feels his heart beat underneath her. There is something beautiful about that sound.

He kisses her hair and laces his fingers in it.

She feels loved, then. She feels important.

They doze off at some point of time, both of them miraculously surviving the night without being preyed upon by another nightmare.

She is the first one to wake up. He is still beside her, asleep. She notices with a mixture of panic, alarm and embarrassment that her mother and sister are no longer there in the compartment.

 _They had seen her with him._

She should be a tad bit ashamed of being seen sleeping with Gale but she is not. She had not chosen this, neither had he, war and bitterness, bloodshed and loss, pain and tears, had forced them to take this path.

* * *

They end up in each other's compartments quite often but they ensure to return to their own compartments before the rest of Thirteen is awake.

They do not talk about it in the day but at night, they are transformed. They become something more than best friends, they become each other's last hope.

She realizes that he is saving her and that she is saving him. It feels so right.

She knows everyone knows about it, she can feel it in their gazes, but no one mentions it. Clearly, there are way more important things to be countered but to her, this is the most important. She hopes that it is the same for him.

Finnick is the first one who talks to her about it. Eyes bloodshot, hands so tightly wrapped in a fist around the rope that his knuckles are white, he storms into her compartment.

She finds herself scared, she blames the Games for it. Well, she blames the Games for everything.

"I need Annie back with me," he hisses. "I have to protect her."

"I am trying," she says, voice subdued.

"Are you?" he screams. "Because all that I see you doing is sleeping with your best friend."

Sarcasm leaks out of his voice as he says best friend.

She feels angry, rage boiling within her for this blatant accusation. She wants to yell at him, tell him that he is wrong but she does not because she identifies the root cause for Finnick's outburst as his unconditional concern for Annie.

"I'll see what I can do, Finnick," she says.

He breaks down. "I love her, Katniss. Maybe you don't love Peeta the way I thought you did but Annie means the world to me."

His words buzz in her head, his blunt dismissal of her feelings towards Peeta like a barbed arrow through her already conflicted shattered heart. It stings for some reason.

She has the urge to scream that he knows nothing about her, that no one knows anything about her but the words die on her lips as she realizes that she herself does not know much either.

* * *

Haymitch tells her that Gale has volunteered to rescue Peeta and the other victors from the Capitol. Her heart drops to her stomach as the realization hits her that today, she might lose them both.

* * *

Peeta strangles her to death, almost. Whatever hope she had managed to keep flickering within her dies abruptly after the incident.

She wishes that he had got the job done, wishes that Boggs had not knocked him out. That way, it would have been easier.

* * *

She is in Two now. She is glad for the escape from Thirteen.

Thirteen had started to feel claustrophobic, spurred by Peeta's arrival, spurred by the realization that she had lost him forever.

She has Gale with her, in Two. He is the only thing that keeps her going. He had been visibly brooding after his return from the Capitol.

She had not done anything about it, had not even taken the initiative to find out what was wrong with him. She had been too preoccupied with Peeta.

Here, in Two, she regrets her nonchalance towards Gale. Again.

She apologizes, he behaves as if it is not a big deal. She realizes how she is always forgiven by him and feels greatly indebted to him.

Three nights later, she kisses him, unable to stand the loneliness any more. She asks him to spend the night with her. He does not refuse.

They fall back into their dysfunctional sleeping routine. In Two, they are free to do whatever they want to do. There is no one to hide from, no reason to keep quiet. They have the rooms to themselves and whatever held them back in Thirteen, disappears.

She loves the way he touches her, how he worships her body, kissing every inch of it, making her feel alive. He moves his mouth over her scars, the ones that have formed after the Capitol rid her body of all its imperfections, and she loses herself in his euphoric whirlpool. Sometimes, she screams because it hurts but she knows there are worse ways to be hurt.

Her hands still quaver when she touches his bare back, raw images of the whipping that he received flashing before her eyes. He holds her gaze every time she lets her hands explore his body, a maze of scars and bruises. He has more scars than she does, war imprinted on him.

She does not know why she does it: spend her nights with him. It is not love, not entirely. She fears it is pain, it is the necessity that both of them require to survive.

The tidal wave of calmness that washes over her when he finishes and she reaches her peak, the numbness that grips her then, helps her to sleep. Just for those few moments, her mind becomes blank and shivering in his arms, she forgets the war.

* * *

The night before they blow up the Nut, the night before she is shot, he is especially shaky. For once, she does the looking after, reminding him that she is there for him.

She takes control that night, tries to free him from the clutches of his own demons.

She guides his hands to where she wants them. She feels a change in the way he looks at her as he makes love to her, perfect as always.

When he comes undone, he buries his head in her shoulders and whispers, "I love you, Katniss."

She freezes, no words leave her mouth and she lies there, motionless.

As he rolls onto his back, she sees disappointment flashing in his eyes.

"Gale," she starts.

At that, he abruptly gets up.

Before she can realize what is happening, he leaves.

She cries that night.

* * *

She is a part of the Star Squad now: Squad Four-Five-One.

They win the war but the victory is marked by so much of loss that it does not really feel like winning.

* * *

She dreams of Prim every night: the parachutes going off, the last look on her face as though she had recognized Katniss in the crowd. She dreams of Finnick too, she worries about his unborn child.

She sees Peeta every now and then, she will still need some more time before she can completely trust him again.

Gale stops visiting her: it is not unwelcome at all because every time she sees him, that olive skin, that dark hair and those hands that had supposedly created the bomb, she is reminded of her little sister.

Her little sister who should have lived.

* * *

She kills Alma Coin. Never for a second does she regret that choice of hers.

* * *

Back in Twelve, she craves for the people who made the place, who breathed life into the lifeless coal mines. She misses Prim more than she can even imagine. She misses her mother and she misses Gale.

It baffles her why after all that he had done, she still longs for him.

* * *

She has been living in Twelve for the past four years.

There are nights when she lies awake beside Peeta. She thinks of all that could have happened, all that should have happened.

She wonders what would have happened had her sister's name not been called out in the Reaping all those years ago.

Perhaps, she would have lived her life in Twelve, Prim going to school, Prim _alive_. She would have hunted in the woods, wearing her father's jacket.

But the possibility that haunts her the most is that Peeta Mellark could just have been the baker's son, not her husband. Perhaps, she would wake up each morning in someone else's arms.

Perhaps, she would have had that fairytale of falling in love with her best friend.

She has forgiven him. A long time ago, in her mind. She knows that is what Prim would have wanted.

But just as she finds herself thinking of those hauntingly beautiful gray eyes, those calloused palms, that scent, she feels Peeta stir beside her.

She hates herself in that moment, hates how Gale Hawthorne still manages to creep into her thoughts. For all she knows, he is kissing a different pair of lips now. She is probably the last thing on his mind.

"Morning," she hears Peeta murmur.

By now, she has drifted off to a different world.

In her head, it is another voice that greets her in the morning.

In her head, she is sixteen, in the woods, her best friend beside her, her _lover_ beside her. He calls her Catnip and laughs that deep soulful laugh which makes her skin tingle, he mocks the Capitol, mimics their accent. They hunt, his snares and her arrows, the ultimate lethal combination.

In her head, she hasn't been forced to grow up so suddenly, by the death of her father, by the Hunger Games, by the Quarter Quell, by Snow, by Coin, by the war.

In her head, she has him and he has her; the only place where they exist together.


End file.
